ANT200H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter Week 8: Experimental Archaeology, Debitage, Taphonomy
Document Summary
Ant200 week 8 oct 25 reading pages 73-78, 80-83. Analysis gaining information by breaking down data into component parts and analyzing their relationship. Interpretation putting elements back together to form a meaningful reconstruction that addresses the research goals. Archaeological record exists in the present but archaeologists are interested in the past: specifically past conditions and human activities. Analogy underlies all prehistoric archaeological reconstruction when there is no historic documentation to infer from: historical archaeology relies more on documentary sources. The more correspondences found between ethnographic and archaeological data and the more specific attributes identified as being associated with the feature, the stronger the analogical interpretation. Technology dominated analogy as support for the theory of unilinear cultural evolution linking australian aborigines with the peoples of the european paleolithic regardless of. The use of technological or other limited criteria to make wide-ranging analogies is not reliable.
